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In the process of reviewing the ERIC Thesaurus for audience-like 
descriptors, I put together a crude facet analysis of the audience
category (as I see it).  I tried to break it down into its various
facets (in all capital letters below).  The first major subdivisions
appears to me to be between the audiences for educational and
training resources.  I have no experience whatsoever in matters
of training, so I am accepting at face value assertions I have heard
regarding differences in the descriptive requirements.

Each of the training and education subdivisions can be further
subdivided into administrator and beneficiary facets (who administers
the resource and for whose benefit (sometimes they are the same
person/class of persons)). At the leaves of the following hierarchy
are controlled vocabularies (schemes or value qualifiers) that
would seem to me to vary based on national designation schemes
(e.g., U.S.-centric education levels such as "primary education"
and "high school").

Anyway, here it is (I apologize for the "training" section--perhaps
list participants with expertise in training matters will join in and
help me correct the errors).

I've also put up an HTML version at (should the formatting below be
messed up):

http://www.iSchool.washington.edu/sasutton/Audience_Facets.html

AUDIENCE (FOR AN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE)
     EDUCATION:
          ADMINISTRATOR:
               --Education professional
               --Student
               --Parent
          BENEFICIARY:
               AUDIENCE POPULATION DESCRIPTORS:
                    ---Intelligence/ability (controlled vocabularies)
                    ---Physical/emotional characteristics (controlled
                      vocabularies)
                    ---Socio-economic status (controlled
                      vocabularies)
                    ---Ethnic groups (controlled vocabularies)
               --Education level (controlled vocabularies)
               --Grade level (controlled vocabularies)
               --Age level (age and age range)
     TRAINING:
          ADMINISTRATOR:
               --Training professional
               --Trainee
          BENEFICIARY:
               AUDIENCE POPULATION DESCRIPTORS
                    ---?? (controlled vocabularies (?))
                    ---?? (controlled vocabularies (?))
               --Training level (controlled vocabularies (?))
               --Occupation (controlled vocabulary (e.g., SIC codes (?)))
               --Personnel groups (?) (controlled vocabularies (?))

Stuart
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Stuart A. Sutton                                      (206) 685-6618 (V)
University of Washington                          (206) 616-3152 (F)
School of Library and Information Science
Box 352930
Seattle, WA 98195-2930           [log in to unmask]
GEM                                         http://geminfo.org (Project)
                                                http://www.TheGateway.org
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